Any plans in the future for an even better pre-amp?

Audio Components Preamplifiers
43

I took the major bug to be as in bugbear ? That’s a term often used on these shores …

44

Bugbear is perfect; an irritation the feature is not included, not an operational flaw.

45

PS Audio has a serious strategy for fast growth:

  • power supply equipment
  • 3 Audio electronics product ranges
    • Sprout
    • Stellar
    • Signature line
      Expanding with:
  • higher end audio electronics
    • Obsidian
  • Speakers:
    • Sprout
    • 3 models in the Stellar series
    • 3 models in the AN series
  • Music studio
  • Octave, music provider/streaming service

They have a great team.

However I am afraid the R&D required for a flawless Obsidian products is underestimated and will drain PS Audio’s R&D resources pretty fast.

I hope that this will not result in:

  • Lack of efforts to resolve current quirks and QA issues in the BHK range
  • Lack of maintaining life cycles of existing products, the DSMP with all it’s end of life cycle Oppo parts is already overdue
  • Drop of development of disk based memory players, leaving the people who started to believe in I2S interfaced DAC empty handed ie. without appropriate sources

I am sure that this is not PS Audio’s intention, but how many projects can PS Audio resources cope with.

The good part is: with such an open and friendly team, the employment policy Paul described in one of his videos and type of products and services they provide, PS Audio must have less issues attracting good personnel. A problem other industries struggle with these days.

46

From the DMP manual: “In non-PS Audio connected DACs, choosing an SACD stereo or multi-channel layer will provide a downsampled PCM version at DMP’s outputs. This downsampled PCM version, output at 88.2kHz/24 bit, is generally superior to the RedBook CD layer.” If that is suddenly not working anymore (after upgrading from 3.10 to 3.13 and still not fixed in 3.14)…Oh yes, bug! Or not? Am I crazy?

1 Like
47

That does indeed sound like a bug. I was also unaware of that feature as it does not apply to me; my non-PS Adio DACs are in my studio.

48

I guess most people have a combination of DMP and PS Audio DAC anyway, so for them live is good with 3.14. I understand they had problems getting full DSD resolution working reliably before. 3.10 is the last version in which the downsampling is intact. So, why not just downgrade? Well, 3.14 is less buggy otherwise, so that would be not really a satisfying solution…

1 Like
49

No, they haven’t… I still need my Aspirin :roll_eyes:

50

Agreed, 3.14 should have all features working properly.

51

That’s a shame. They have previously said their priority is on new products over fixing old products that don’t work properly. Which is understandable to some extent. Building new products earn them new sales, fixing old discontinued products don’t earn them any new sales. I hope they spare some effort to get all features working properly for all DMP owners: the list of new products under development seems to be endless.

2 Likes
52

21 posts were merged into an existing topic: Various experience with various products

53

This one is easy to demonstrate even if you have a Directstream DAC. Disconnect your HDMI cable connect the DMP to the DAC with an AESEBU XLR cable. Load a SACD into the DMP. Press play. You will see the DMP still choose to play the DSD layer the time counter will advance and the display on the DMP will indicate DSD but you will get no sound out of the DAC. The DMP does not Downsample to hand off the signal to the DAC.